1. Atmo The spheres on the floor portray characters from the storybook with light and localized sound. Atmo is an interactive environment developed for an oncology hospital. It gives children the experience of physically entering the fantastic world of bedtime stories. Children can collect a book from the hospital library…

Orit Shaer

Here Is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics By Misha Angrist (2010) This book has affected me both personally and professionally. In 2007 Misha Angrist, a genetics professor, became the fourth person to have his entire genome decoded and shared publicly, as part of Harvard’s Personal Genome…

Ashley Karr

If you get an opportunity to have a conversation with Skot Carruth, take it. He is a UX professional and principle at philosophie, a UX and product consulting firm. In addition, he is a fellow UCLA graduate, a smart man, and an all-around good person. Happily, we both stumbled upon…

Philippa Mothersill, V. Bove

Describe what you made. The EmotiveModeler is a CAD tool that takes advantage of our intuitive perception of the meaning embedded in objects. It allows designers to use words to create objects whose forms communicate emotive character. Imagine, for example, the simple cylindrical bottle full of spicy chili pepper sitting…

INTR Staff

Blog/Juan Pablo Hourcade: Designing the Cognitive Future, Part VI: Communication http://interactions.acm.org/blog/view/designing-the-cognitive-future-part-vi-communication I liked your blog very much, Juan Pablo, thanks for posting it. I am now working on an academic project in HCI that does exactly what you are talking about: helping people from different cultures communicate better. I think…

Kasper Hornbæk

The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal. — Seth Godin, Tribes (2008) For the past few years I have pondered how to be wrong in HCI research. By “being wrong” I…

Jon Kolko

The phrase business requirements is used to describe a set of features or capabilities that have been determined to be important to substantiate a particular strategy. These elements are “required” to remain competitive, or to spur innovation, or to increase market share or any other key business driver. They are…

Uday Gajendar

Thrown into the swirling currents of digital product development—either at an agile startup or a corporation “going lean”—designers must work with a variety of commercialized concepts that typify current design practice. Yet these concepts raise doubt, if not outright suspicion, about truly cultivating design depth and forethought in that practice.…

Celine Latulipe, Heather Lipford, Mary Maher, David Wilson

How do you describe your lab to visitors? We actually have two labs: the HCILab, where most of our grad students work, hang out, and hold meetings; and the InDe (Interaction Design) Lab, which triples as maker space, studio classroom, and research lab. In addition, we have a separate quiet…

Richard Coyne

Networked computer systems, tablets, and smartphones foreground the issue of interactivity among people, and between people and objects. But how interactive is architecture? Mikael Wiberg outlines some of the technologies and concepts that might contribute to an interactive architecture. The list includes virtual reality (VR), 3D worlds, video games, mobile…

Mariam Asad, Sarah Schoemann

The field of HCI research has been increasingly interested in civic engagement and the full spectrum of activities that entails, from hyperlocal neighborhood message boards to the Arab Spring. Across this work, researchers have focused on how we might leverage existing technologies or design new tools to better support the…

Vicki Hanson, Anna Cavender, Shari Trewin

Words or phrases can suggest bias or reflect negative, disparaging, or patronizing attitudes toward individuals or groups of individuals. These words and phrases can influence our impressions, attitudes, and even our actions. Choosing language that represents the preference of the groups to which it refers can convey respect and integrity.…

Randolph Bias, Douglas Gillan

Someone once said, “Gravity—it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.” In the art-and-science world of user interface (UI) design, the first law we consider—almost the only “law” that gets invoked in our still-too-subjective practice—is Fitts’s Law: The time to acquire a physical target is a function of the…

Sukeshini Grandhi

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this new forum on HCI education. Human-computer interaction (HCI) as a field continually evolves to embrace the changing landscapes of technology and infrastructure, as well as the expanding capacities and contexts of technology use seen over the past several decades [1].…

Kat Jungnickel

What might sewing and wearing your research bring to an understanding of mobility, gendered citizenship, and the changing nature of public space? This is one of the questions at the core of my research about Victorian women’s cycle wear. For the past two years I have been literally getting into…

Zhengjie Liu, John Karat, Gerrit van der Veer, Tuomo Kujala

With a mission to become a geographically inclusive global community, SIGCHI has since 2009 been strengthening its efforts in the developing worlds to promote HCI. These initiatives usually begin with a SIGCHI-organized regional meeting between delegates from local HCI communities and SIGCHI officers, with the goal of enabling mutual learning…

Interaction design (IxD) research cuts through many domains of HCI (work, leisure, games, health applications, ubiquitous computing) yet remains distinctive. There are convincing arguments that Research through Design (RtD) is a valid research method in our field. Important to these arguments is how RtD allows IxD researchers to actually do…

Alan Blackwell

Recent issues of Interactions have laid the groundwork for a debate about the disciplinary status of HCI. This was initially perceived as a “big hole” in HCI research—the concern that HCI does not seem to have a solid intellectual or methodological core [1]. That article by Vassilis Kostakos drew on…

Željko Obrenović

Several design scholars have suggested that design is a political activity. Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman, for instance, claimed that all designs are manifestations of political and ideological ideas because design outcomes influence our lives [1]. Björn Franke argued that a design is a political decision about how people should…

Hamid Ekbia, Bonnie Nardi

Is there a relationship between computing and economy? Most of us, if asked, will answer this question in the affirmative, thinking probably of such things as jobs lost to automation, big money made with technological innovations, and smartphone apps that enable novel business transactions, communication, and entertainment. These are all…

Yue Pan, Erik Stolterman

Today HCI research is quite established as an academic field, with its own conferences and journals. It is still a young research field that during its evolution has been strongly influenced by science-driven disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, and computer science. At the same time, aspects that can be…

Peter Wright, John McCarthy

Involving users in the design of systems has been a byword in HCI since its inception. The nature and depth of this involvement has varied from identifying needs and requirements to imagining solutions and evaluating outcomes. As different disciplinary perspectives and values have been brought to bear on the design…